Germs

GERMS 1989 – 1990
GERMS delves into the taboos and contradictions within Victorian values. Extracts from ‘The Young Ladies Journal Of 1866’ provide the ingredients for a concoction of surrealist recipes, absurd demonstrations and moral sermons on matters such as; vice and virtue, purity, domestic education, etiquette and acceptable social behavior. Choreography, film, text and sound design join forces to create a montage of pathways through the secret thoughts of two women, where their subversive mischief runs riot. The intriguing transformations of costume and employment of objects with their multiple meanings and associations, creates a pallet of visual references that inform the movement and choreography.

“The Young Ladies Journal of 1866 proved to be a minefield of gauche, puritanical notions about the training of young children. Our twin roles as alternate matriarchs and patriarchs led us into a land of unlimited misdemeanors, rudeness, wild dancing and absurd humor: Victorian ladies with Brueghelian headgear, corseted bustles, batons and tin pots armed us for our ritualized preaching: “to the pure, all things are pure”

Germs was funded by the Arts Council Of England, Greater London Arts and a 1989 Digital Dance Award. The work featured in both the Spring Loaded festival, Dance Umbrella, the British Art Show, and toured throughout the UK as well as performances in France, Spain, Germany and Holland, with support from the British Council.

PRESS:
“The whole work is superbly crafted and brilliantly performed. It reaffirms Snaith’s standing as one of the most significant choreographers of our day”
Mark Harris, The Express

“Yolande has used her subversive imagination and almost vicious wit to create a montage of surrealist recipes, absurd demonstrations and moral sermons together with 15 chamber pots, a lot of vegetables and film projection”
Everywoman

“The program’s greatest event was Yolande Snaith’s Germs…..I have seen no new British choreography this year more strange, original, funny, disturbing or excellent than this.”
Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times

“Snaith is an absurdist, a clever and theatrical absurdist, with wit, precision, a sense of history, craftsmanship and a flair for gesture….What made all of this so marvelous was the dance sense that informed the most ordinary moves – the precision and variety of timing, the harmony of line from head to toe, even in the most drolly angled poses, the sense of movement developing organically through each episode”
Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times

“Yolande snaith, a maverick choreographer who can turn a chamber pot into a wildly eccentric tool of creative genius…..Germs is dance theatre at its most witty and engaging for those who enjoy a send-up to end all send-ups.”
The Sandard

“It seems to me that Snaith composes her works with the eye of a painter while at the same time she has a strikingly original and inspiring movement range. Each movement and image resounds with associations. It is wonderfully eccentric, and has been composed with a boldness of creative freedom that is inspiring.”
Lesley-Anne Sacks. Dance Theatre Journal

“they stride purposefully about the stage, intoning the text with strict precision like nursery drill sergeants. Their movements are swift and sure, and Snaith’s offbeat timing is so meticulously observed that even the simplest gesture becomes fresh and surprising”
Christopher Bowen, The Scotsman